Dear Jeyamohan,
In your speech recently, you had put forward the following thought. ‘We should strive to do the work that is challenging and difficult at least one hour per day,’ The typical advice would be to carry out the work that we enjoy everyday. Hence what you say is odd. What is the need for it? I am trying to clarify my confusion.
(I had written about my problems earlier. You had responded harshly when I asked about online classes).
M.
Dear M,
There are circumstances where I am being harsh. Some people take a stand and form an opinion that is convenient for them and then wear it as a screen. They use it as a shield. They defend any new idea with this shield. They pretend this to be a debate.
There is no point in debating with them since the same debate will end up in making the screen more logical for them. I am trying to ruthlessly tear this screen to show them their condition. If they feel insulted as a result, I have no problem. It is good for them if they can look inward. Insulted ones will walk away, which is good, I have nothing more to say or do then.
Recently one of my friends had a stroke. He is a journalist and a literary thinker. After the treatment, he had severe amnesia. He continued his treatment in India and then in America. There the doctors suggested a rigorous routine for his brain. He learnt to code on the computer. He told the trainer, ‘I am not doing this for landing a job. I don’t like mathermatics. I am doing programming to arouse my brain’. Along with coding, he carried out a comparative study of the words in the Malayalam dictionary. He studied literature and listened to music, both of which he liked. He returned to his brilliant past quickly .
We are all moving towards living a comfortable life. Many of us struggle usually till 40 years to get there. (For some people even this struggle is absent, many women do not have to struggle in life). At some point, we find ourselves hitting this sweet spot. Everything happens the way we want. Once then, there are no challenges or struggles in our life. Worries and anxieties only remain here. Most of these are our fascinations.
The economic growth today is easily pushing more and more middle class people into such life. This life happens to have no big work for the body and mind. There is nothing more harmful to one’s body than this resting state. This is the same as keeping a machine idle for many years.
Lately the doctors are warning against this laziness and suggesting physical exercises. Hence, we can see people taking morning walks and doing exercises. But my doctor friends tell me that not even 10% of them continue for too long. Most of them stop exercising after a few days.
This is because laziness is not a physical state. It is our mental state. Without motivating the mind, body alone cannot be motivated. If the mind is inspired, body will be naturally galvanized. One needs to train the mind to remain inspired. This is what I said in my speech.
‘Don’t get tensed; Be calm; Don’t get involved in anything;’ – these were the advice the doctors gave sometime ago. They said that this is for ‘peace of mind’. Their curriculum says that peace of mind is vital to good physical health. But their suggestion will only lead to more laziness. Lazy mind will land you in fatigue. Fatigue leads to restlessness. We can observe that people get restless only in this resting state, suffering themselves and inflicting pain on others.
Today people think they lead a good life , if they stay aloof, live with as little mental work, brain work and physical work as possible. They think it is enough to run with such a simple daily routine. Many people refer to such a routine when they talk about their health. Good sleep and good food , such a story usually goes. This is a picture of a lazy life, in fact the breeding ground for all diseases.
We got this mental frame from our feudalistic past. Poor people shall work hard with their body and mind. The wealthy shall do nothing , running a lazy life and enjoying all the pleasures. Hence they believed it is an aristocratic feature to be lazy. But today the middle class can live the same life. Middle class today imagine that they are aristocrats, thus leading a sedentary life.
I asked my doctor friend why someone will stop exercising. He said, “They typically would have minor problems in the body. They point to this as the reason for avoiding exercises. Ironically, that minor ailment would have occurred due to the lack of exercise. This is a toxic circle. Most of them are within it’
“Can we not explain this and help them understand?”, I asked.
“Very very difficult. Because, what they need is mental training. They create all excuses for keeping the mind and body as is, without pass. It is hard to break. This is not a doctor’s job.” he said. “Any illness has its own physical exercises. Doing it will rectify the illness including back pain , knee pain. They all have physical exercises that can cure. They don’t do exercises, but look to treat the disease medically.”
There is a huge empty space in the mind of someone leading this lazy life. They fill this empty space with anxieties of the disease. They truly want to talk about the disease alone. They thrive in the disease. Their mindtime is fully run by the thoughts of these diseases. They talk of medicine only to talk about their disease.
The fundamental reason for all these diseases is the laziness of the mind. To eradicate this laziness alone, I speak of training the mind, asking for the hard labour of our brain as a daily practice. This is not what I say. Doctors all over the world suggest this today. Our brain today has seated on the road like a bullock with a big cart on its back. I speak of whipping it back to its position.
[2]
There is a daily that we all love. A place close to our heart, tasty food, good music, some nice work we can do in leisure. All these are analogous to a small child dreaming of eating chocolates for all its three meals. This leisurely life will help to recuperate for few days after tough work. But if we do this all through our life, we will be patients within a year or two.
When state owned BSNL weakened, numerous employees took to voluntary retirement. Among the ones retired, many fell sick within few years, women in particular. Trade unions conducted research on this topic in Kerala. The findings were shared with those who wanted to pursue voluntary retirement. They were suggested ‘not to rest, to be active, do some work’. My friends formed an institution to keep retired people busy, that I inaugurated.
Let me tell you what happens here. From our young age, we learn to use our body and mind only when it is needed. We walk a little when necessary. We don’t need to walk if there is a two wheeler at home. We read only to find a job. We don’t read to learn something new. Once we get a job, we don’t learn anything at all. As a result, our daily routine demands nothing of our body and mind. Hence the body remains at rest, so does the mind.
Our homes today are constructed using foreign techniques. Foreign homes are designed for cold lands, where people spend half of the year inside home. So, they build plenty of rooms, living rooms and bed rooms. Today, we have the same luxuries here. Hence, we have started living inside our home. We can stay indoor for many weeks. Many of us do not like to step outside home. We complain of dust, smoke and noise outside. But foreign homes have gyms inside that we don’t have here. Our bodies have got accustomed to this luxury.
The human mind seeks entertainment. Man first started spending money towards entertainment in the 18th century. This marked the beginning of entertainment becoming big business. Any business would try to enslave its consumers. Today, we are enslaved by the entertainment industry- cinema, television and the internet now. They are so designed that we spend our time indefinitely, without realizing we do. We cannot go deeper here, if we do, we will tire and will get out of it. Hence they are designed purposefully to keep our brain detached, prolonging our stay.
As the entertainment businesses compete and grow, it is sufficient for us to sit back and watch. Even news debates are superfluous and easily forgettable. Articles are well within 500 words. One hour, forty minutes, twenty minutes, five minutes of video lengths have dwindled to become 30 seconds. Simple chats have become entertainment programs.
These are beanbags for our brain. Our brain is trapped here, drowning in it. We are watching here and there but we don’t remember what we saw. We can’t make out how we spent the entire day watching. We think this is a happy-go life, but in reality our body has started to get sick due to laziness. But we don’t know it here. Surprisingly when the disease surfaces, we think the disease has nothing to with our lifestyle.
For example, back pain, knee pain, spondylitis, shoulder pain and more such pains, indigestion, acidity like stomach ailments, dizziness like complications, they all have a common cause – our lifestyle. First appearance of this complication is sleep disorder, spending a long time lying on the bed but without sleep. As a result, our digestive systems malfunction and our muscles are unable to rest.
Without putting a lot of strain on the brain, insomnia develops. Insomnia leads to even lesser demand on the brain. We lose our habit of paying deeper attention to anything. It becomes harder to read even 100 words. Even then, we are unable to understand anything new and can only read what we already know. We cannot watch anything more than ten or fifteen minutes.
(Researching into this, television programmes gave a break after 15 minutes. Today’s research shows this 15 minutes break is very long. One media expert told me, ‘2 minutes is our average attention span right now. People watching OTTs pause the movie every 7 minutes and do something else. Screenplay shall have a twist every seven minutes’, he said)
Social media is designed for this lazy state. They always show the present time. We can post our daily lives as movies. We can be involved in the day’s political news or cinema gossip. We can spread hatred on someone , we will have some reason to do so. It is like wandering in a busy market place. We are everywhere but we are nowhere too.
This laziness ruins our memory in a stunning fashion. We cannot remember anything that happened a day or two before. The story doesn’t come to mind after seeing the same movie again after a month. Many people see the same video so many times. We fail to recollect small incidents in our daily talks. So we talk in general terms , in loops.
We are not embarrassed when we say ‘I forgot’. Then there are those who say, ‘I normally do not keep anything on my mind.’ ‘Nothing stays on my mind’ is a sign of a pure soul.
Sickness resulting from laziness is promoted as laziness causing the sickness.Hereafter, the disease, treatment for the disease, and fellow patients, their life goes on.
Patient’s conviction is only needed to get out of this downward spiral. ‘I tell my patients to exercise, give demanding tasks to the brain. Superficial, comfortable physical life and mental life are the only two reasons for the disease’, the doctor said. ‘If someone starts, ” But doctor…”, then I know he will not recover’. He is building excuses. Then there are some who feel the shock, they can escape this spiral’ .
Hence I put forward hard labor for the brain. Because this is the beginning. Everyday one needs to perform one hour of intense mental work. This is the physical equivalent of weightlifting and running to the brain. This training will increase our focus, boost secretion of the chemicals that make the brain function better. Consequently, we can perform other mental functions faster. Aroused brain cannot be lazy anymore. The same rule that applies to the body, one who runs five kilometers a day will be very active all through the day.
I have been practicing this everyday for a very long time. Writing fiction gives me joy but I do brain wrecking work two hours everyday. Let me tell you what I did today. I read four different books to write an eloborate Wiki page on Thiru.Vi.Kalyanasundara Muthaliar and its two sub-chapters. I read four chapters of The Norton anthology of theory and criticism, took notes for me to understand better. My literary work doesn’t count here.
The classes that I organize with the help of my friends and teachers’ guidance has the same goal. People who are interested can take on art, literature, culture and philosophy intensely in life through these classes. The expected complications occuring in our mind and body can be handled by meditation and yoga trainings.
I notice I have been advocating this for the last twenty years when I look at my portal. This is the precise reason why I am writing a 25000 pages novel , when people are unable to read even 100 words. Hence I am against online learning. Online classes only justify the laziness. I wanted to support those who shake off and come out.
I don’t speak to those lazy ones, speaking only to those who break away from the fog. I am travelling in the opposite direction to the general norms. I believe it is a big service in the present times.
Jeyamohan.
Tamil : https://www.jeyamohan.in/198971/
Translated by Muthu, Bangalore
